4.2 • 639 Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2014
⏱️ 2 minutes
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0:00.0 | Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in. |
0:05.8 | Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years. |
0:11.0 | Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program. |
0:19.6 | To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co. |
0:22.7 | .jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt. |
0:34.4 | This is Scientific Americans' 60-second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute. |
0:40.4 | Ever look in the mirror first thing in the morning and say, I look like crap? Well, for some spiders, |
0:45.3 | looking like poop can actually be a lifesaver, because masquerading as a bird turd appears to protect certain |
0:50.4 | arachnids from getting eaten by wasps. That's according to a study in the journal Nature Scientific |
0:55.0 | Reports. Researchers were marveling over the plentiful bird dew they were seeing in a forest in Taiwan. |
1:00.0 | Then they realized that some of those droppings were in fact speckled spiders sitting atop silky white discs at the center of their webs. |
1:07.0 | Sure, this scatological costume might fool a bunch of PhDs, but do the predatory wasps |
1:12.6 | fall for it? |
1:13.6 | To find out, the researchers used a spectrometer to confirm that the spider in its web is |
1:18.6 | spectrally indistinguishable from bird's blat. |
1:20.6 | Then they changed the coloring of some webs by dusting them with carbon powder. |
1:24.6 | And they found that spiders that rested on the artificially black |
1:27.5 | and silk were much more likely to get eaten. Now, these results don't prove that wasps buy |
1:32.9 | the whole poop act. Maybe spiders against the white background are just harder to spot. To be |
1:37.8 | more confident that looking like poop is key, researchers might test the wasps to find out |
1:42.6 | if they're just glad they didn't step in it. |
1:44.9 | Thanks for the minute. For Scientific Americans' 60 Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin. |
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